+$Id$
+
General Information
------- -----------
-Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer for Unix and Unix-like operating
-systems. It is based on GTK+, a graphical user interface library,
-and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
+Ethereal is a network traffic analyzer, or "sniffer", for Unix and
+Unix-like operating systems. It uses GTK+, a graphical user interface
+library, and libpcap, a packet capture and filtering library.
+
+The Ethereal distribution also comes with Tethereal, which is a
+line-oriented sniffer (similar to Sun's snoop, or tcpdump) that uses the
+same dissection, capture-file reading and writing, and packet filtering
+code as Ethereal, and with editcap, which is a program to read capture
+files and write the packets from that capture file, possibly in a
+different capture file format, and with some packets possibly removed
+from the capture.
The official home of Ethereal is
- http://ethereal.zing.org
+ http://www.ethereal.com
The latest distribution can be found in the subdirectory
- http://ethereal.zing.org/distribution
-
-Interesting and exotic packet traces can be found at
-
- http://ethereal.zing.org/~gram/sample.html
+ http://www.ethereal.com/distribution
Installation
Ethereal is known to compile and run on the following systems:
- - Linux (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x)
- - Solaris (2.5.1, 2.6)
- - FreeBSD (2.2.5, 2.2.6)
+ - Linux (2.0 and later kernels, various distributions)
+ - Solaris (2.5.1 and later)
+ - FreeBSD (2.2.5 and later)
+ - NetBSD
+ - OpenBSD
+ - Mac OS X (10.2 and later)
+ - HP-UX (10.20, 11.00, 11.11)
- Sequent PTX v4.4.5 (Nick Williams <njw@sequent.com>)
- - Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) (3.2, 4.0)
+ - Tru64 UNIX (formerly Digital UNIX) (3.2 and later)
+ - Irix (6.5)
+ - AIX (4.3.2, with a bit of work)
+ - Win32 (98, NT, 2000, XP)
-It should run on other systems without too much trouble.
+and possibly on other versions of those OSes. It should run on other
+Unix-ish systems without too much trouble.
NOTE: the Makefile appears to depend on GNU "make"; it doesn't appear to
work with the "make" that comes with Solaris 7 nor the BSD "make".
+Perl is also needed to create the man page.
+
+If you decide to modify the yacc grammar or lex scanner, then
+you need "flex" - it cannot be built with vanilla "lex" -
+and either "bison" or the Berkeley "yacc". Your flex
+version must be 2.5.1 or greater. Check this with 'flex -V'.
-In addition, wiretap (see below) requires "flex" - it cannot be built
-with vanilla "lex" - and either "bison" or the Berkeley "yacc"; whilst
-the "yacc" that comes with Solaris 7 has a "-p" flag to replace "yy" in
-various variable names with a specified prefix, to allow multiple
-yacc-built parsers in the same program, it doesn't replace "yy" in the
-"y.tab.h" file, so the lexical analyzer has no clue that "yylval" has
-been renamed to "wtap_lval". (What *were* they thinking?)
+If you decide to modify the NetWare Core Protocol dissector, you
+will need python, as the data for packet types is stored in a python
+script, ncp2222.py.
-You must therefore install GNU "make", "flex", and either "bison" or
+You must therefore install Perl, GNU "make", "flex", and either "bison" or
Berkeley "yacc" on systems that lack them.
Full installation instructions can be found in the INSTALL file.
Usage
-----
-In order to capture packets from the network, you need to be running
-as root, or have access to the appropriate entry under /dev if your
-system is so inclined (BSD-derived systems and Solaris typically fall
-into this category. Although it might be tempting to make the
-Ethereal executable setuid root, please don't - alpha code is by nature
-not very robust, and liable to contain security holes.
+In order to capture packets from the network, you need to be running as
+root, or have access to the appropriate entry under /dev if your system
+is so inclined (BSD-derived systems, and systems such as Solaris and
+HP-UX that support DLPI, typically fall into this category). Although
+it might be tempting to make the Ethereal executable setuid root, please
+don't - alpha code is by nature not very robust, and liable to contain
+security holes.
Please consult the man page for a description of each command-line
option and interface feature.
wiretap will have more features than libpcap, but wiretap is still in
its infancy. However, wiretap is used in ethereal for its ability
to read multiple file types. You can read the following file
-formats, and create display filters for them as well:
+formats:
+
+libpcap (tcpdump -w, etc.) - this is Ethereal's native format
+snoop and atmsnoop
+Shomiti/Finisar Surveyor
+Novell LANalyzer
+Network General/Network Associates DOS-based Sniffer (compressed and
+ uncompressed)
+Microsoft Network Monitor
+AIX's iptrace
+Cinco Networks NetXRray
+Network Associates Windows-based Sniffer
+AG Group/WildPackets EtherPeek/TokenPeek/AiroPeek/EtherHelp
+RADCOM's WAN/LAN Analyzer
+Lucent/Ascend access products
+HP-UX's nettl
+Toshiba's ISDN routers
+ISDN4BSD "i4btrace" utility
+Cisco Secure Intrustion Detection System iplogging facility
+pppd logs (pppdump-format files)
+VMS's TCPIPtrace utility
+DBS Etherwatch for VMS
+Traffic captures from Visual Networks' Visual UpTime
+CoSine L2 debug output
+Output from Accellent's 5Views LAN agents
+Endace Measurement Systems' ERF format
+Linux Bluez Bluetooth stack "hcidump -w" traces
+Network Instruments Observer version 9
+Trace files for the EyeSDN USB S0
+
+In addition, it can read gzipped versions of any of these files
+automatically, if you have the zlib library available when compiling
+Ethereal. Ethereal needs a modern version of zlib to be able to use
+zlib to read gzipped files; version 1.1.3 is known to work. Versions
+prior to 1.0.9 are missing some functions that Ethereal needs and won't
+work. "./configure" should detect if you have the proper zlib version
+available and, if you don't, should disable zlib support. You can always
+use "./configure --disable-zlib" to explicitly disable zlib support.
+
+Although Ethereal can read AIX iptrace files, the documentation on
+AIX's iptrace packet-trace command is sparse. The 'iptrace' command
+starts a daemon which you must kill in order to stop the trace. Through
+experimentation it appears that sending a HUP signal to that iptrace
+daemon causes a graceful shutdown and a complete packet is written
+to the trace file. If a partial packet is saved at the end, Ethereal
+will complain when reading that file, but you will be able to read all
+other packets. If this occurs, please let the Ethereal developers know
+at ethereal-dev@ethereal.com, and be sure to send us a copy of that trace
+file if it's small and contains non-sensitive data.
+
+Support for Lucent/Ascend products is limited to the debug trace output
+generated by the MAX and Pipline series of products. Ethereal can read
+the output of the "wandsession" "wandisplay", "wannext", and "wdd"
+commands. For detailed information on use of these commands, please refer
+the following pages:
+
+"wandsession", "wandisplay", and "wannext" on the Pipeline series:
+ http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006c79
+
+"wandsession", "wandisplay", and "wannext" on the MAX series:
+ http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006972
+
+"wdd" on the Pipeline series:
+ http://aos.ascend.com/aos:/gennavviewer.html?doc_id=0900253d80006877
+
+Ethereal can also read dump trace output from the Toshiba "Compact Router"
+line of ISDN routers (TR-600 and TR-650). You can telnet to the router
+and start a dump session with "snoop dump".
+
+CoSine L2 debug output can also be read by Ethereal. To get the L2
+debug output, get in the diags mode first and then use
+"create-pkt-log-profile" and "apply-pkt-log-profile" commands under
+layer-2 category. For more detail how to use these commands, you
+should examine the help command by "layer-2 create ?" or "layer-2 apply ?".
+
+To use the Lucent/Ascend, Toshiba and CoSine traces with Ethereal, you must
+capture the trace output to a file on disk. The trace is happening inside
+the router and the router has no way of saving the trace to a file for you.
+An easy way of doing this under Unix is to run "telnet <ascend> | tee <outfile>".
+Or, if your system has the "script" command installed, you can save
+a shell session, including telnet to a file. For example, to a file named
+tracefile.out:
+
+$ script tracefile.out
+Script started on <date/time>
+$ telnet router
+..... do your trace, then exit from the router's telnet session.
+$ exit
+Script done on <date/time>
-libpcap, Sniffer (uncompresed), NetXray, Sniffer Pro, snoop,
-Shomiti, LANalyzer, Network Monitor, and iptrace 2.0 (AIX)
IPv6
----
If your operating system includes IPv6 support, ethereal will attempt to
-use reverse name resolution capabilities when decoding IPv6 packets. If
-you want to turn off name resolution while using ethereal, start ethereal
-with the "-n" option. If you would like to compile ethereal without
-support for IPv6 name resolution, use the "--disable-ipv6" option with
-"./configure". If you compile ethereal without IPv6 name resolution,
-you will still be able to decode IPv6 packets, but you'll only see IPv6
-addresses, not host names.
+use reverse name resolution capabilities when decoding IPv6 packets.
-The "Follow TCP Stream" feature only supports TCP over IPv4. Support for TCP
-over IPv6 is planned.
+If you want to turn off name resolution while using ethereal, start
+ethereal with the "-n" option to turn off all name resolution (including
+resolution of MAC addresses and TCP/UDP/SMTP port numbers to names), or
+with the "-N mt" option to turn off name resolution for all
+network-layer addresses (IPv4, IPv6, IPX).
+
+You can make that the default setting by opening the Preferences dialog
+box using the Preferences item in the Edit menu, selecting "Name
+resolution", turning off the appropriate name resolution options,
+clicking "Save", and clicking "OK".
+
+If you would like to compile ethereal without support for IPv6 name
+resolution, use the "--disable-ipv6" option with "./configure". If you
+compile ethereal without IPv6 name resolution, you will still be able to
+decode IPv6 packets, but you'll only see IPv6 addresses, not host names.
SNMP
----
-Ethereal can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets, but it relies on an
-external SNMP library to do this. You can use either the UCD or the CMU
-SNMP libraries. The configure script will automatically determine which
-library you have on your system and will use it. If you have an SNMP
-library but _do not_ want to have ethereal use it, you can run configure
-with the "--disable-snmp" option. No SNMP support will be compiled into
-ethereal with this option.
-
+Ethereal can do some basic decoding of SNMP packets; it can also use the
+UCD SNMP library, version 4.2.2 or later, to do more sophisticated
+decoding, by reading MIB files and using the information in those files
+to display OIDs and variable binding values in a friendlier fashion.
+The configure script will automatically determine whether you have the
+UCD SNMP library on your system, and will use it if it's version 4.2.2
+or later. If you have an SNMP library but _do not_ want to have
+ethereal use it, you can run configure with the "--without-ucd-snmp"
+option.
+
+If you have an earlier version of the UCD SNMP library on your system,
+the configure script will stop, reporting that it can't find the
+"sprint_realloc_objid()" routine; you should either upgrade to version
+4.2.4 or later, as UCD SNMP 4.2.4 fixes some potential buffer overflow
+problems, or should configure with "--without-ucd-snmp".
+
+
+How to Report a Bug
+-------------------
+Ethereal is still under constant development, so it is possible that you will
+encounter a bug while using it. Please report bugs to ethereal-dev@ethereal.com.
+Be sure you tell us:
+
+ 1) Operating System and version (the command 'uname -sr' may
+ tell you this, although on Linux systems it will probably
+ tell you only the version number of the Linux kernel, not of
+ the distribution as a whole; on Linux systems, please tell us
+ both the version number of the kernel, and which version of
+ which distribution you're running)
+ 2) Version of GTK+ (the command 'gtk-config --version' will tell you)
+ 3) Version of Ethereal (the command 'ethereal -v' will tell you,
+ unless the bug is so severe as to prevent that from working,
+ and should also tell you the versions of libraries with which
+ it was built)
+ 4) The command you used to invoke Ethereal, and the sequence of
+ operations you performed that caused the bug to appear
+
+If the bug is produced by a particular trace file, please be sure to send
+a trace file along with your bug description. Please don't send a trace file
+greater than 1 MB when compressed. If the trace file contains sensitive
+information (e.g., passwords), then please do not send it.
+
+If Ethereal died on you with a 'segmentation violation', 'bus error',
+'abort', or other error that produces a UNIX core dump file, you can
+help the developers a lot if you have a debugger installed. A stack
+trace can be obtained by using your debugger ('gdb' in this example),
+the ethereal binary, and the resulting core file. Here's an example of
+how to use the gdb command 'backtrace' to do so.
+
+$ gdb ethereal core
+(gdb) backtrace
+..... prints the stack trace
+(gdb) quit
+$
+
+The core dump file may be named "ethereal.core" rather than "core" on
+some platforms (e.g., BSD systems). If you got a core dump with
+Tethereal rather than Ethereal, use "tethereal" as the first argument to
+the debugger; the core dump may be named "tethereal.core".
Disclaimer
----------
Use at your own risk.
-Gerald Combs <gerald@zing.org>
-Gilbert Ramirez <gram@verdict.uthscsa.edu>
+Gerald Combs <gerald@ethereal.com>
+Gilbert Ramirez <gram@alumni.rice.edu>
+Guy Harris <guy@alum.mit.edu>
git.samba.org / obnox / wireshark / wip.git / blobdiff